Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, we're fairly close to your income level, about same down payment and were looking in Burke/Springfield. I said were looking, because we stopped. It's impossible to find anything without getting into massive bidding wars, escalating, and basically buying a 40-50 year old house on a whim. We are risk adverse and couldn't do it. I have also had to stop working multiple times over my career, and an anticipating having to potentially do that again in the next year, so we are very fiscally conservative.

This listing is an example of how absolutely insane that area is to buy in right now.

This home sold in March 2020 for $715k.

It listed recently for $875k and sold for $960k.

As far as I can tell from the listing, the only update between then and now is a new dishwasher, hot water heater, and some sort of HVAC modification.

https://www.redfin.com/VA/Burke/9721-Stipp-St-22015/home/9766007

That house had an assumable 2.5% VA loan. I’m sure that had something to do with why it sold for so high.

This price is actually not that high. The house sold for $739k in 2006. I'm surprised the owner sold it for only $715k in 2020. How come a SFH like this one depreciated over 14 years? That's insane. Whoever bought it got a steal. It should have sold for at least $850k. This is why $960k sounds about right when you factor the inflation that started after the pandemic hit.

2006 was the height of the housing boom--we bought a house in 2009 for 350k that was sold for 615k in 2006. The 739k was probably way over priced.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, we're fairly close to your income level, about same down payment and were looking in Burke/Springfield. I said were looking, because we stopped. It's impossible to find anything without getting into massive bidding wars, escalating, and basically buying a 40-50 year old house on a whim. We are risk adverse and couldn't do it. I have also had to stop working multiple times over my career, and an anticipating having to potentially do that again in the next year, so we are very fiscally conservative.

This listing is an example of how absolutely insane that area is to buy in right now.

This home sold in March 2020 for $715k.

It listed recently for $875k and sold for $960k.

As far as I can tell from the listing, the only update between then and now is a new dishwasher, hot water heater, and some sort of HVAC modification.

https://www.redfin.com/VA/Burke/9721-Stipp-St-22015/home/9766007

That house had an assumable 2.5% VA loan. I’m sure that had something to do with why it sold for so high.

This price is actually not that high. The house sold for $739k in 2006. I'm surprised the owner sold it for only $715k in 2020. How come a SFH like this one depreciated over 14 years? That's insane. Whoever bought it got a steal. It should have sold for at least $850k. This is why $960k sounds about right when you factor the inflation that started after the pandemic hit.

Anonymous wrote:Our Hhi is 255k and our PITI is 4k. Totally fine for cash flow. We have more in retirement but we are older and only started saving aggressively for retirement in our mid 40s…. Do you have stable jobs? Will you have a pension? We travel, eat out, (but brown bag lunches) drive old cars , house bimonthly cleaners. Kids have expensive camps but no more nanny. Will we be able to pay full fee for vassar for both kids?? Not easily but kids will get in state tuition in Virginia schools or we will recalibrate.

Thanks, you sound similar to us. No pension for us though. We brown bag lunches and will drive our cars till they must be replaced, then will replace with used (but newer) cars, etc. We do eat out and find ways to travel by deal shopping and travel card points; DH travels for work and we use his accrued points. No home cleaners except occasional when we're up to our ears in mess and too busy to deal. We do try to live a little too.

OP here. Thank you. We didn't make this income until mid thirties and also had student and car loans. One of us worked no profits for a decade and one of us went back to school. Shortly after that, we had kids and daycare, etc costs. First down payment on our fixer upper house was a couple grand over a decade ago.

Now that we are earning more and kids out of daycare, loans paid off, we are saving as much as we can, but will need to make a call about where we live balancing our priority for our kids being in decent schools in middle and highschool. The target areas we have been prioritizing are becoming very competitive with bidding wars. Mortgage rates mean we walk a fine line. We aren't moving till next year, just planning ahead and anticipating how much we could stretch if we must stretch to have kids in decent schools. Do not feel paying for private for two kids while living in cheap housing is better than paying extra mortgage and living in an area with better publics while accruing home equity (plus even religious school private tuition for two kids simultaneously is probably going to be more expensive annually than extra mortgage)

Our Hhi is 255k and our PITI is 4k. Totally fine for cash flow. We have more in retirement but we are older and only started saving aggressively for retirement in our mid 40s…. Do you have stable jobs? Will you have a pension? We travel, eat out, (but brown bag lunches) drive old cars , house bimonthly cleaners. Kids have expensive camps but no more nanny. Will we be able to pay full fee for vassar for both kids?? Not easily but kids will get in state tuition in Virginia schools or we will recalibrate.

I think you can definitely afford it. People in DC have these abnormally low PITIs (at least people here who live in SFH and only pay $2500 per month?). I live in a city with higher RE costs, and what you are proposing is extremely conservative (20% of HHI). However, I would try to increase savings. Not sure where all your money is going but it’s low, and you need to improve.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, we're fairly close to your income level, about same down payment and were looking in Burke/Springfield. I said were looking, because we stopped. It's impossible to find anything without getting into massive bidding wars, escalating, and basically buying a 40-50 year old house on a whim. We are risk adverse and couldn't do it. I have also had to stop working multiple times over my career, and an anticipating having to potentially do that again in the next year, so we are very fiscally conservative.

This listing is an example of how absolutely insane that area is to buy in right now.

This home sold in March 2020 for $715k.

It listed recently for $875k and sold for $960k.

As far as I can tell from the listing, the only update between then and now is a new dishwasher, hot water heater, and some sort of HVAC modification.

https://www.redfin.com/VA/Burke/9721-Stipp-St-22015/home/9766007

That house had an assumable 2.5% VA loan. I’m sure that had something to do with why it sold for so high.